Hunters of Angels
by Heir of the void
Summary: The public eye is focused on Infinite Stratos pilots, those who fight with the great machines on equal terms. However, what of those men who must fight the I.S. without the benefit of such technology. This is the story of these men, revolutionaries who work in the shadows in a desperate bid to change the world.
1. Chapter 1

I sat, my back pressed against the warm metal frame of the computer rack, carefully soldering the device sitting on the ground in front of me as quickly as I could. The low light in the room and the, by necessity, weak light on my helmet made it a difficult task, but it was one I had practiced several times in preparation for the mission.

"Alexander. Are you done yet?" I turned. It was my partner, Archer. In hindsight, that was obvious, given that we were the only people in the server farm. He was a slight young man, wearing the same gear that I was; googles, a mask and a helmet that completely obscured his face and a black, armored, full body jumpsuit covered in tactical webbing.

None of the gear was army surplus gear; we had _far_ better equipment than most conventional militaries these days. It did, however, have the unfortunate side effect of making us look like dictionary illustrations of urban terrorist.

Which, I suppose, all things considered, was fair.

A laptop computer rested on Archer's lap, wires running from it, into the water bottle sized device I was working on, to a computer on the rack behind me. He had one hand on the keyboard and the other in the grip of a combat rotary shogun resting on the ground next to him. My task required both hands and my full attention; He was providing overwatch while I assembled the device.

The device was a data tap that connected to a computer and allowed us to extract target information while bypassing most conventional security measures, but it had the noticeable flaw of requiring a physical connection to work. Given that the European Infinite Stratos Defense Company, a major Infinite Stratos development corporation, was too smart to farm key processing work out to a server cluster in Thailand, we were now several dozen stories off the ground in the corporation's headquarters, a large skyscraper in the Greater San Francisco Area.

"All right, I think it's ready." I said in a terse whisper.

"Commencing extraction." Archer muttered, with about as much inflection as ever; i.e. none. He took his hand off of the shotgun and entered a command into his computer. A pair of green LEDs lit up on my device as the program plundered the target data from the system. Archer hesitated for a moment, and then entered another string of commands, unleashing some of his hand-crafted digital monsters into the network.

"Okay, let's get out of here." I said, standing up and returning my electronics equipment to its bag.

Archer disconnected the device from his computer. I bundled up the wires and placed the device on the shelf next to the victim computer, then reached into a pouch hanging from my webbing ad withdrew a smallish lump of C-4. I pressed it onto the data tap I had so painstakingly created, then procured a detonator from another pouch and pressed it into the plastic explosive.

As Archer stowed his computer, I drew my Personal Defense Weapon (PDW). It was an SMG modified to fire high explosive rifle rounds. I'd only been doing this for three months, making me the team's newbie, but _everyone_ knew you needed all the stopping power you could get if you wound up crosswise with an Infinite Stratos.

I raised my left hand the side of my helmet and pressed a concealed button, connecting my communication device to the team network. "This is Revenant." I muttered, pressing my back against a server rack at the end of the row, "we have everything we need."

"Great," Nick, the team heavy weapons specialist, responded, "I've completed everything on my end. This place is ready to blow."

"And I've secured the goods." Nova added. He was out team's underworld connection and go-to guy for the acquisition of objects."

"Stay focused." Charlie, the team leader and sniper said, "I've eliminated the key targets, so we're done here. That doesn't change the fact that we're deep in enemy territory. One screw-up and we're all dead. Now, follow the plan and move to the extraction point."

I waved Archer forward as Charlie cut the link. I kept my PDW out as we advanced; in close quarters I doubted I would have the opportunity to use my rifle to full effect. We moved along the aisle at the end of the server farm, exited through a security door we had disabled, went a short distance down a hallway, and entered a service hallway.

Security in the service hallway was much laxer than it was outside, and we had already disrupted the entire net, so no alarms went off as we made our way to an interior staircase that went all the way to base of the building.

As Archer and I began descending the staircase, fire alarms began to blare.

"The alarms are responding to a fire in the I.S. Labs." Archer said. As he spoke, an explosion shook the building.

"Yeah and there's plenty of explosives up there," I responded, waving Archer forward, "We need to get going."

The first team member we encountered as we descended was Nick. He had his machine gun out, holding it pointed down the stairs. As I reached the landing, Archer right behind me, I spotted Nova on the landing below, Nick covering him. He was wearing a large backpack and had several nonstandard large pouches on his tactical webbing, all of them bulging. There were also several jet-black bags set down by his feet, no doubt full of more of the same.

"Come on, let's move," Nick said, scanning the stairs above, the holding up his hand, signaling 'stop'. "Wait, Charlie is coming."

Our team sniper appeared out of a door near the top of the stairway, dropped a line down the stairwell, jumped off of the landing, and slid down his line until he was level with the team. He hung in the air next to us for a moment, his customary sniper rifle on his back. Then Nick sighed, walked over to the balcony, and held out a hand to the sniper.

"Thank you kindly," Charlie said, taking Nick's hand and pulling himself over the balcony. "Speed appears to be of the essence here, gentlemen. Let's get outta here."

We hurried down quite a few more stairs. Several times, explosions rocked the building above us. They weren't intended to bring down the building, just to scare everyone into leaving. Honestly, I doubt that the Alexander Knight from three months ago could have managed the run without becoming at least winded, but I was stronger now.

We soon reached the bottom of the shaft, near the bottom of the building. Nick walked down a short hallway and began to plant shaped charges on a far wall. I held my breath. If the plans had been wrong, or the charges weren't enough to breach the wall, then we were about to bury ourselves under several hundred tons of rubble. Conceivably, we could survive, but emergency services would have some awkward questions if they dug us up.

Nothing happened for a moment, then there was a _bang_ and the wall crumbled. Nick and Charlie charged through the curtain of smoke left behind. Moments later, Nova, Archer, and I followed. I made my way through the rubble into an underground parking lot, and followed Charlie to what looked like a nondescript windowless white van. It had begun its life as one, though it had undergone some _serious_ aftermarket modifications.

Nova opened the back doors and began unloading his loot into the trunk. I stepped up next to him, and began returning most of my gear to the racks intended for just that in the back of the vehicle, though I kept my PDW. As the other members of the squad stowed their gear, I climbed into the passenger section of the van and sat down next to archer.

As Charlie sat down in his seat, we sealed the doors on the van. Now that we were in an enclosed, controlled environment, it was safe to remove our masks. The suits functioned as a full set of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological (NBC) warfare gear; in case a target ever tried to gas us or we needed to secure a leaky biological weapon. It also had the added benefit of preventing us from leaving any sort of biological evidence behind at the scene of an event.

"So, Archer," I said, turning my head toward him. "I'd say that was a job well done, huh?"

"Yes," He said, in his usual monotone, "All mission objectives were completed beyond expectations."

I'd learned better than to ask him why he talked like that. "So, um, what about those viruses you him them with? What were those for?"

"There were three viruses. The first was to destroy records of our presence. The second affected the fire suppression systems on the building and delayed reporting of the initial explosions to Emergency Response. The third destroyed the backup copies of the data we stole."

"Well, that's... awesome, I guess," I said.

I sat in silence for a moment, and then Charlie started the van. It ran on a quiet electric motor, which was key to its primary function. The outer layer of the car had been layered with powered nanomaterials, enabling active optical camouflage. The cell had clandestinely stolen the tech from a U.S. government lab developing it for a new 3rd generation I.S. united, called Salient Shadow or some such crap.

As the van pulled out of its parking space, Charlie flicked a switch. The van shimmered like oil on water, then faded from sight. Charlie drove us out of the underground parking lot, out past the parking gate, and onto the street. Perhaps due to the virus, the Fire Department had not yet encircled the building.

We drove for a few minutes, and then slipped into another underground parking garage, one which Nova had purchased a parking stub for earlier in the day. Charlie pulled the van into a remote corner of the garage, shut down the stealth field, drove us back to the road.

We had a long drive ahead.

"I don't believe this!" Nova shouted. "It's all that's on every channel."

"It does kind of suck." Nick agreed. "After all our work..."

"All anyone is covering is this Orimura guy." I said. "We blew up a building, and no one cares?"

"If it bleeds, it leads." Nick said. "If we wanted publicity, maybe we should have gone for more casualties. Though when last I checked, we were criminals, a demographic for whom avoiding attention is generally helpful."

"Still." I muttered, turning off the TV.

"So, gentlemen," Charlie said, as he walked into the main room of the safe house. "Congratulations on a job well done. Archer, how are we looking?"

"No major suspicions of anything other than a major industrial accident so far." Archer responded, not looking up from his laptop.

"Excellent. Nova, we secure to begin sifting through the loot?"

"Aye aye, boss." The thief cum con artist cum revolutionary said.

Without any further conversation, I walked to the first sack of loot, opened it up, and began to set the stolen devices on the floor it a neat grid pattern.

After leaving San Francisco, we had fled to an ACCLAIM safe house on the outskirts of Carson City. We had all removed the minor disguises that we had worn on the raid, showered, and generally began post-mission activities.

Now, we were looking through what we had stolen and analyzing it. This, right here, was what ACCLAIM was all about.

As I worked, it thought back to that rainy night three months ago.

"_I have to say, kid, I'm impressed that you found me here." Charlie Knight said, looking down at the wet, shivering youth sitting next to him in the boxcar. "That, unfortunately, brings me to the central problem; we can't have people finding us._

"_It... It's not like that!" It said desperately, shuffling back on the course wooden crate. "I want to join you."_

"_You want to join up, do you? Mind telling me why?"_

"_The women control the government. You fight them, don't you?"_

"_That part of it." Charlie said, shaking his head. "But that's really only the tip of the iceberg."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_I was military, once, an officer. I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of this great nation, and I left to fight the Infinite Stratos because I intend to fulfill that oath. Can you explain why?"_

"_Because the dominance of women is unjust?" I said, tilting my head._

"_Not really. Injustice has happened before. I'll give you a hint. Firearms changed the social order in this world. Why?"_

_Something clicked in my brain. "Because with a gun, any person can become dangerous." I said, speaking more in stream of consciousness than anything else, the implied threat still at the front of my mind. "Plate Mail can't make a knight invincible any more. When anyone with a rifle can shoot a lord off his horse, he needs to pay attention to the common man."_

"_Exactly." Charlie said, nodding. "And the Infinite Stratos?"_

"_Puts all that power back in the hands of a few people." I said._

"_Excellent." Charlie said. "I would have been able to tell if you were lying. If you found us, you probably have something to contribute. So, we will take you on a provisional basis. Betray us, of course, and you're dead."_

_He took his backpack off, opened it, and rummaged around for a moment. Then he withdrew a book in a waterproof cover and tossed it to me. I peered at the cover, trying to discern the title through the thick plastic. It looked like it said _Steelheart_._

"_That," Charlie said, "Was written before the I.S., but I think it gives a pretty good impression of what could happen if too much power is in the hands of a few people. Give it a read; its pretty good."_

"All right, people." I said, looking through the notes I had taken during the process of looking through the loot. "It's a pretty promising haul."

"Come on, enough with the suspense." Nick said.

"Energy weapons." I said. "We may finally be able to develop energy weapons without needing an I.S. core."

When I said this was what ACCLAIM was about, what I meant was weapons development. After the introduction of the I.S., everybody came to assume that it was superior to conventional military equipment, and the shrinking of the Military-Industrial Complex more or less assured it would stay that way. ACCLAIM sought to change that.

We steal I.S. Technology from everyone who develops it, and we attempt to adapt it for use by ordinary humans. We've had a fair few success so far, like the stealth coating on the van or the shoulder-fire repeating recoilless rifle Nick brings when we are expecting trouble.

"Though." I said, pointing at one object, a box about as long as my forearm and as wide as my outstretched fingers, "That isn't counting that... whatever it is. Archer, nothing about it on the data we stole?"

"Nothing."

"I sure it's nothing." Nova said. "Think of it this way. We could all be millionaires with what we stole yesterday. I think a job like that is good, even if we can't figure out some box."

I sat in the central room of the safe house, flipping through some designs on my laptop. As the team engineer, it's my task to work on integrating stolen technology. Archer was in a chair across the room from me, working on some new code of his. I wasn't really sure where the other three team members were.

There was a sharp rap on the door. I froze.

"Not code." Archer said. "Most likely an intruder. I-"

There was a bang, and smoke began to pour from the entranceway. Archer dove out of sight. A figure walked in, wreathed in smoke.

"Don't worry." The figure said in a female voice. "We aren't government. You've stolen something beyond your understanding, and we want to take it off of your hands. You know what it is. Just give it to me, and it'll be like we were never here.

The smoke cleared, revealing a rather attractive, short, Caucasian blond woman. She was wearing a blouse and pants, like she was going to a business meeting rather than a fight.

"If you aren't government." I said carefully, lowering my hands toward my PDW, "then who are you?"

"We represent a group called Phantom Task." She said, walking forward. "Just give it to us before this-"

A gunshot. The woman stood for a moment, then fell on her front, revealing a large shotgun wound across her ruined back.

A moment later, I heard the distinctive rapport of Charlie's sniper rifle from somewhere above me. It looked like we had a fight on our hands.


	2. Chapter 2

So, chapter 2. Anyway, reviews are good, and suggestions are always welcome.

Archer stood up from behind the couch he had been covering behind.

"Good work." I said, drawing my weapon. "What the hell is going on?"

"Unknown." Archer said, as a fusillade of automatic gunfire began from outside.

I stood up and ran to the wall next to the entranceway. Carefully, I looked around the corner. The door was completely destroyed. They must have used some sort of explosives on the door; it wouldn't be any good keeping more of these goons out.

"Archer, push the couch in front of the doorway." I said. "Pile up anything you think might slow them down."

As Archer moved to comply, I moved next to the window and, carefully, looked out.

There were three black-painted vans parked in front of the safe house, and they had disgorged a squad of black-clad men wearing what looked like low-budget versions of our mission gear. They had taken cover wherever it was available and were trading fire with Nick and Nova.

The safe house was in a row of townhouses, though ours was the only one occupied. A Street lined with parking spaces ran down the center of the row, with empty townhouses on either side.

As I watched, a Charlie's sniper rifle cracked and one of the assailants dropped. However, a hail of fire immediately descended on his position.

I made a quick count of the enemies. I realized pretty quickly that there weren't enough of them to account for all of the vehicles. As this occurred to me, I heard boots in the hallway in between the sounds of the bursts of gunfire coming from outside. I ran in a crouch toward the couch Archer had titled into position and took cover behind it.

Normally, something like a couch wouldn't have offer much protection against high-velocity rifle bullets. However, ACCLAIM had taken that into account when designing the safe house. Most of the furniture was constructed with armored plates built in to allow them to serve as functional cover elements.

I raised by PDW. I would have preferred to get my rifle, but there was no time for that now.

As the first attacker burst into the room, it occurred to me that I still had my anti-I.S. rounds loaded.

The first gunman rounded the corner. I raised my weapon and fired a short burst. Charlie had endlessly drilled me on fire discipline; two in the chest, one in the head and done.

That, however, was a shooting technique intended for normal bullets. With my gun loaded as it was, the results were... messy.

I gunned down the second intruded as he entered on the heels of his comrade, then a third, then a fourth. From the results of my shooting, it was pretty clear none of these people were wearing body armor.

For the first time in my life, I was ending the lives of other humans. I was numb. It almost disturbed me how easily I did it, but I managed to push that aside. It was a matter for later. For now, I-

My gun clicked empty.

I rolled clear of my firing position as the next enemy came through the door, reaching down to my belt for another clip.

Which, of course, wasn't there.

I took in a short breath, then scuttled to the side behind a thinking char. The gunman fired several rounds into the chair, and seemed surprised when none of them penetrated. He seemed almost as surprised when Archer's shotgun took his head off.

Abruptly, the building was rocked by an explosion. A wave of sound washed over the building, hurting my already-stressed ears.

I sprang forward as archer covered me, and grabbed the assault rifle from the headless gunman. It was an M16, fairly standard. As it searched him for more clips of ammo, I realized it was actually a headless gunwoman. Strange.

As I scrambled back into cover, another armed figure entered the room. I raised the assault rifle to my shoulder and fired another quick burst, dropping her. Archer produced a small cylinder and threw it at the door. I began to dive for cover, almost panicking before I saw it trailing smoke.

As the smoke filled the apartment, we exited the main room and entered the short hallway leading to the bedrooms. We closed the door, which was armored, of course, and locked it.

"That should buy us a second," I said, maybe a bit loud. My ears were ringing from the gunfire; we hadn't had the selective ear plugs we wore on missions for this fight.

"They breached the outer door easily." Archer said. "There is no reason to believe this one will slow them down any more."

I nodded, backing away from the door. I was surprisingly tired from the fight. That happens, I've heard, from the adrenaline. The gunfire outside was tapering off. I hoped we'd won.

We made our way to our rooms to arm ourselves. My hearing was starting to come back, and the smell of cordite stuck to my clothes.

I walked into my room and over to the case next to the bed and withdrew my rifle, an HK416 high-accuracy custom.

Once I was armed, I made my way to the window, avoiding the shards of glass that had been scattered on the floor by a stray bullet. Cautiously, I looked outside.

It looked outside. It looked like a warzone, which I suppose wasn't too surprising. Black-clad corpses lay scattered across the parking area, picked behind the planters of cars they used for cover.

The scars of explosive detonations were scattered across the pavement. One of the black vans lay in smoking pieces, and another sat on flat tires and was pockmarked by bullet holes.

Footsteps. Someone walked into the room. I whirled around. It was Charlie.

"What... what happened?" I asked, somewhat shocked.

"These idiots showed up. They started shooting a few seconds after you killed their rep. Then Nick started suppressing them while nova got his guns. I grabbed my rifle and went up into the attic and started shooting. When they started pulling out heavy weapons on the vans, Nick started lobbing explosives."

"Any idea what they were after?" I muttered. I was still recovering. I was a little new to this.

"No idea who they were or what they were after." Charlie said, shaking his head.

"Who they were?" I said. "The one they sent in to make their demands said she represented something called 'Phantom Task'."

"Phantom Task..." Charlie said, putting his hand on his chin. "I feel like I've heard of them."

"Well, clearly they have resources at least equivalent to ours." I said, "Otherwise, I don't see how they could hope to mount a daylight raid like this."

"That just adds another reason we need to get out of here."

A muffled knocking came from the door leading to the main chamber. Charlie and I drew our weapons and cautiously moved back to the main corridor.

"Open up! It's me!" Someone, who sounded like Nova, said from the other side of the door.

"Password?" I responded.

"It's swordfish."

"Let him in." Charlie said.

Nervous, I approached the door. I was fairly sure that it was Nova. One of the attackers could captured him, gotten the password out of him, and now be imitating his voice, but I figured that was pretty unlikely, so I opened the door.

"Hey... do you hear that?" I said.

I could hear something strange, at the edge of my senses. Something... almost familiar. It was coming from the direction of the main room. I sprang forward, pushing past Nova, and into the main room of the safe house.

As I scanned the room, I quickly realized that something was wrong, though I couldn't put my finger on what. The corpse piled by the door... the overturned furniture... the shattered windows... the bloodstain where the body of the Phantom Task negotiator had fallen...

Her body was missing.

The sound seemed to be changing. It felt like it was coming from overhead now, and it seemed to have grown stronger. I could almost feel it now. It was moving, shifting back toward the hallway.

What was that noise? Where had I heard that before?

I stood there for several moments, stunned.

Then the roof exploded.

As it collapsed, a heavy length of wood, which must have been some kind of roofing joist, fell on me. Acting on instinct, I dove for cover, which probably saved my life, as it caused the wood score only a glancing hit on me.

I was slammed into the floor and pinned by the board. As I drew a pained breath, I looked up.

Something hovered in the air, a humanoid figure half again the height of a man. An Infinite Stratos.

Without any conscious thought, I began to analyze the machine. It appeared to be a Raphael Revive, albeit with considerable aftermarket alteration. That limited the operator to any one of about... four billion people on the planet.

It appeared to have been modified to favor speed over defense or firepower, with several auxiliary thrusters mounted on to the wings, and at least four extra anti-gravity pods mounted in place of body armor and shield projectors. It carried a tri-barreled 30mm autocannon, a burst from which had probably destroyed the roof.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BASTARDS ACTUALLY SHOT ME!" The pilot shouted, waving her autocannon. "WE JUST CAME TO SAVE YOU SOME TROUBLE, AND YOU HAD THE GALL TO SHOT AN I.S. PILOT!"

I wanted to make a witty retort about honor among thieves, but I was still having a bit of trouble breathing due to the whole being crushed thing.

"Us? Having the gall to shoot you?" Charlie said, looking up at the I.S., eyes blazing. "This is a war, if you haven't noticed. That sort of thing happens, a fact you bitches seem to have forgotten. What makes you so superior to us we are unworthy to strike you?"

He lowered his head. "I'll never bow to you."

"What makes us superior to you male vermin?" She lowered the autocannon. "This."

She fired a long burst, seeming to use her I.S. unit's fire control to mostly avoid hitting the sniper. The floor around him shattering into splinters, and he fell wordlessly, a few droplets of blood seeming to hang in the air for a moment before they fell after him.

"Now for the rest of you." The I.S. shot forward, grabbed Nova, and shot into the sky.

The I.S. became a speck as it shot upward. I tracked it with my eyes as it rose. It stop, hung in the air for a moment, then I thought I saw something separate from it, but that could have been my imagination. Then she began to drop toward us.

From the main door to the safe house, nick bust in, carrying his recoilless rifle. He drew a bead on the descending I.S., and began to fire.

At this range, he would be using 'Red Arrow' anti-air rounds. They were rocket assisted projectiles that used a small rocket motor to allow them to climb beyond what the velocity imparted on them at launch. Each of the rounds was equipped with a powerful computer guidance system, giving it some ability to chase down a maneuvering target. Given the limitation given by its platform, it was a weapon perfectly designed to fight an I.S.

And it did almost nothing.

Maybe if there were another twenty men firing the weapons, it would have been different. If that had been the case, we could have spread operatives out over the equivalent of a few city blocks and 'boxed in' the I.S., and the weight of fire would have been enough to bring it down. Maybe.

As it was, the pilot evaded most of the rockets. She dodged widely as she descended, making maneuvers that should have killed her, turns the projectiles couldn't match.

The I.S. touched down in the room, hovering about a foot above the floor. The pilot stared at Nick with contempt as he pumped three rockets into her chest, all of which detonated harmlessly against her shield.

The pilot held out a hand and materialized a long, slightly curved, single-edged blade. As she held it, the blade began to crackle with electricity. An electro-talwar.

Then she shot forward and rammed the blade into Nick's chest.

I wanted to scream, but there was a chance, however slim, that if I kept still, her hypersenses might not pick up my life signs.

She hovered in the center of the room, rotating slowly. It dawned on me that she was looking for something.

I held still, trying to control my breathing. As the enemy rotated to face me, something happened. A small box lying on the floor next to me, the one that none of had been able to identify, began to open like a music box.

Something began to extend from it. A ball of light suspended on four triangular metal pylons slanted outward from it. As it fully extended, the radiance began to dim, revealing dozens of motes of light floating within a transparent crystalline sphere.

"Ahh." The pilot said, her eyes focusing on the box. "There you are."

She began to float towards it, her eyes taking on a sheen of madness as she looked at the sphere.

I knew that if this was what then had come to take, I couldn't let them have it, no matter the cost.

"No," I spat, clenching my hand into a fist over the sphere. "My precious."

I brought my fist down on the sphere.

It exploded. Everything seemed to freeze. The motes of light shot out across the room, then, began to glide back toward the sphere, condensing into strings of light as they did so. They shot back to the ruins of the sphere and began to orbit the now-empty pylons, accelerating as they did so. Then they latched onto my fingers and shot up my arm.

It was painful. It felt a bit like the time I had electrocuted myself as a child, only a hundred times worse. The pain stayed in my arm for a moment, then began to crawl outward across my body as I spasmed in agony. It hit my pain threshold. I blacked out.

I woke up.

As the pilot of the enemy machine stood frozen in shock, I slid out from under the beam.

"You just killed my friends, bitch." I growled, looking down. "The only brothers I have left." I touched my heart. "Big mistake."

I snapped my right arm out to the side, a growing silvery light radiating from my fist. As my arm fully extended, the light began to grow, extending outwards perpendicular to the floor. In a moment, I was holding a long, crystalline, silvery spear.

It was a wondrous weapon. The staff of the spear was about as long as I was tall, around six feet or so, though the blade of the spear, which was about a handspan wide, continued for maybe another foot beyond that. A pair of metal prongs continued upwards from the top of the staff, wrapping around the base of the blade. A small knob of the same silvery material as the rest of the weapon caped the butt of the spear. Despite its size, the spear felt like mist in my hand.

The enemy pilot raised her sword, blue-white sparks snapping off of it. I thrust my spear forward, seeking her blood.

The enemy pilot parried, knocking my spear to the side. I moved with her counter, continuing the rotation of my weapon to slam the butt of the spear into her shield. Sparks flew as I recovered from the attack.

Moving with the supernatural speed granted by the Infinite Stratos system, the enemy pilot dropped back and raised her blade. I held my spear in front of me in a guard position, ready for the next attack.

"What... What are you?" The enemy pilot spat.

She shot forward. I switched my spear to my off hand, and, as she lowered her blade, I leapt to the side, faster than I was fairly sure was humanly possible. As her blade bit into the floor, I thrust my spear forward. My spear struck something. Her shield! I pushed, and my spear broke through, electricity arcing off the tines surrounding the base of the spear tips.

My thrust hit home, and the tip of my spear bit into the left 'wing' that extended above the pilot's shoulder. With a grin, I twisted the spear and swung it to the side, shredding stabilizers, counter-grav pods, and lift thrusters.

She wouldn't be escaping now.

I returned my spear to a vertical position, ready to catch her counterattack. It wasn't necessary; she staggered as her lift thrusters cut out, and she had to abort her counterstroke to catch herself.

Not giving her a chance to recover, I raised my spear over my head and brought the blade down on her like an axe. It struck her shield, sending a fountain of sparks into the air.

The enemy pilot swung her sword, a heavy, two-handed strike. I caught it with my spear, but my hands ached from absorbing the force of the impact. I countered with a quick thrust.

It was a glancing hit, one that would have been almost pointless in a normal fight. However, the tip of my weapon caught on her shield and scraped across it.

I was so focused on following through with that attack that I barely saw her strike.

I screamed as the electricity coursed through my body. It was painful, of course, but after the pain of whatever happened after I touched the sphere, it really wasn't that bad in comparison.

The sword also didn't cut me, but I didn't really realize that at the time.

As my opponent recovered from her strike, I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head from the electrical attack. I had to end this now. I could feel myself beginning to tire, although it was a distant sensation, like it was something happening to someone else. I grasped by spear with both hands and brought it to chest level.

She charged, having to step across the earth like a human being now. If nothing else, I had wounded an I.S. pilot, more than I had ever believed I would accomplish.

The enemy pilot brought down her blade in an overhead strike. I sidestepped, and thrust my spear forward. It stuck her shield in midair perhaps a foot away from her chest. The tip wavered, but I pushed it through.

My blade struck, punching through her armor like an icepick through cardboard and plunged into her chest, just below her rib cage.

The pilot of the machine looked at, bewildered, like a child who had just been told exactly how awful the world was. She reached an armored hand behind her back and brought it back covered in blood.

I jerked my spear back, and blood spurted from the wound. The pilot fell, and blood began to pool around her. I dropped my spear, and it shimmered and vanished. I took a step forward and touched the cuirass of the fallen suit.

Nothing happened. I'm not sure what I had been expecting, or why. It was an impossible fantasy. No man save the traitor could operate one of these wonderful, terrible machines.

Then my exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I blacked out.

I opened my eyes slowly. There was a figure standing over me, one holding a pistol.

"Get up, Alexander." A female voice said. As I looked more carefully at the person in front of me, I realized she was wearing ACCLAIM gear, and she was a woman.

"I'm Sara Ranger." She said, reaching down to grab my hand and pull me up. "I'm here to rescue you. Now, we need to get out of here.


	3. Chapter 3

As I climbed to my feet, I groaned. My legs were shaking, and my vision started to swim if I focused for too long on any one place.

"I feel like I got kicked by a bus." I muttered, extending an arm to stabilize myself.

"That doesn't make any sense."

I looked back at the person, apparently an ACCLAIM operative, in front of me. She was wearing a full tactical suit, which vouched for her reliability, as did the fact that, in my present state, the police really didn't need to resort to any clever tactics to defeat me.

On the other hand... The idea of a woman wearing the colors of ACCLAIM simply seemed to boggle the mind. True, while we were an organization with high-minded sentiments, a return to... one might say gender equality was our _de facto_ primary goal. Why would a woman want to fight the present order when it benefited her so much?

I focused on the woman herself, rather than on why she was here. She looked surprisingly young, with a small, lithe frame which seemed to be complemented by the tactical suit. I couldn't make out her hair or eyes given the black goggles and helmet she wore, but she had smooth, rounded lines on what I could see of her face.

"Wait a second." I said, turning toward her. I take pride in the fact that I barely teetered at all as I did so. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

I couldn't tell, but I got the distinct impression she rolled her eyes. "I already told you; I'm Sara Ranger. And I think it would be obvious, but I'm here to save your sorry ass."

"I'm sorry about that; I've had a tough day."

"Great. Anyway, we need to get out of here." She turned and began to walk away.

"Wait," I said, holding up my hand. "What about the rest of my team?"

"Leave the dead where they fall." She said, without turning around. "We're sending in a sweeper squad in. They'll take care of them."

I whistled softly. Among the right circles, the sweeper squads were legendary. If the rumors were true, they were composed entirely of Special Forces soldiers who had defected from their armies after the introduction of the I.S. system. While that seemed far-fetched, there _were_ an awful lot of SF guys who resigned after the White Knight incident, and from what I had heard, many of them had dropped off the radar.

Of course, if you believe everything you heard, then Sweeper Squad soldiers were ten feet tall and wore battlesuits capable of taking on an I.S. and winning. That was, of course, ridiculous. Where would an organization like ACCLAIM find the resources to build battlesuits?

"Okay... In that case, then, how exactly are we getting out of here?" I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of what seemed suspiciously like bailing out on my comrades, but this felt like orders from higher up. Besides, if a Sweeper Squad was being committed to this, I probably didn't want to stick around anyway.

"I took an exfiltration drone in to a location not far from here." Sara said. "We'll be flying out on that."

"And how exactly is a helicopter going to get us out of here? If you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of a city!"

I got the distinct impression that Sara was rolling her eyes. "It's heavily stealthed." She said, "There's a lot more you can do to hide an aircraft than to hide a van. They've decommissioned the Continental Missile Shield and its accompanying radar grid, which is just about the only thing that does, or did, a wide-area broadcast that can burn through our stealth. We'll be fine."

"Famous last word." I muttered, following Sara out into the battle-torn main area of the ex-safe house. We walked out through the main door, onto the central area of the block of town houses.

After that, we made our way through the blasted area outside the building. The burnt-out husks of several vehicles were still scattered throughout the area, some of them still smoking faintly. We threaded through the wreckage on the battlefield, making our way toward the end of the row.

I wasn't, to be perfectly honest, exactly sure how much I trusted this Sara girl. For one thing, she was a girl. In my line of work, that was one black mark against her right there. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like girls _per se_, but in this world that's something that has to be sacrificed for the good of all of us.

We reached the end of the row and began climbing a hill into a small forested area next to the townhouses. As we pushed through a tangle of brambles, I found myself envying Sara and wishing I had thought to grab my Combat suit.

A short distance into the forest, we reached a small clearing, which contained the exfil drone. It was my first time seeing something like it. I was, to be clear, a fairly junior member of ACCLAIM. I had never been involved in an operation using something like this.

The exfil drone looked like a small helicopter. There was a bubble-cockpit at the front, with two seats for operators. There was a small body behind that, with a hatch for stowing or retrieving gear. A small tail mounting assist jets continued behind that. Small engine pods were mounted on either side of the cockpit on what looked like short swivel booms, which mounted the rotors that lifted the drone. The entire thing very angular, and painted a light blue-white, presumably to help it blend in with daytime skies.

"So." I said, stand at the edge of the clearing while Sara stowed her gear. "I guess this thing is pretty important, huh."

"You could say that," Sara said, not bothering to look at me. "Given our chronic resource problems, these things are pretty hard to come by." She wrapped her knuckles on the hull of the vehicle, producing a sound more like what you would expect from plastic than metal. "It's made of supercomposites and nanoalloys, which keeps the weight unbelievably low."

"Probably helps with top speed and fuel efficiency, too." I said, walking toward the drone to get a closer look.

"Ya, you're right, actually." Sara muttered, closing the equipment hatch.

"See, I'm not a complete idiot."

"And what, exactly," Sara said, folding her arms under her breasts, "Gave you the impression that I thought that about you."

I shrugged. "Just seemed to fit."

"Get in the drone, smart guy."

"Thanks, I think."

"Don't push your luck," Sara grumbled, opening the passenger doors and climbing in.

I walked over to the opposite drone door and climbed in, electing to keep my rifle with me. As I climbed in, I thought I heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Once inside, I found the seat was small, and slightly cramped, but comfortable.

"You ready?" Sara said, leaning towards the somewhat minimalist controls arrayed in front of her.

I nodded.

"Here we go."

Sara pushed the throttle, and the engines on the drone started with a low whirr. The quickly reached their operating speed, at which point Sara wasted no time in lifting the helicopter off of the ground.

The aircraft rose, slowly rotating as it did so. I watched out the wide bubble canopy of the cockpit as Sara deftly brought the drone to a cruising height. The engine pods rotated slightly into a flight position, and we began to smoothly accelerate as we climbed.

"You don't happen to be prone to motion sickness, do you?" Sara asked, glancing at me as she worked the controls.

"No. Why?"

"Umm. Good."

The ground shrunk steadily as we rose, the townhouse turned battlefield quickly passing out of sight. Still, we continued to climb. Quickly, we entered the lower cloud level, and the ground vanished entirely, replaced by layer after layer of puffy clouds.

"Allright, you can relax." Sara said, taking her hands off of the controls. "We're good now."

"I suppose you mean we're out of visual detection range, right?"

"Yea. This thing has the radar cross-section of a pea, so we're just about set."

"I see." Then something rather obvious crossed my mind. I suppose I should have thought of it earlier, but I've been having rather a busy day. "Were are we going?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Figures." I muttered.

"I don't know where we're going." Sara said. As if on cue, the bubble canopy of the cockpit abruptly began to darken, becoming completely translucent in a matter of seconds.

I sighed. Sometimes, I think I never would have signed up for this job if I had taken a moment to think about how much of this cloak-and-dagger crap would be involved. Still, I guess it seemed necessary, at least from a certain point of view.

"I guess this is why they call this a drone, huh." I said. "I was wondering about that."

"Nah, not quite. It's called a drone because it can be flied remotely from an operating base."

"Is that what's happening now?"

She shook her head. "Currently, we're on internal autopilot control."

I relaxed a bit. Autopilot was one thing, but sitting in a craft flown by someone with a joystick potentially hundreds of miles away was quite another. I don't know why that seemed so much worse; maybe it was the possibility that a remote control could be hacked.

We flew for some time after that. The aircraft flew smoothly on autopilot for hours, only occasionally making a maneuver that I could feel inside the cockpit. One thing that's worth noting is that flying in such a small craft with the canopy completely opaque can be... disconcerting. Perhaps it's the feeling of fragility that you get in a craft that small.

In any event, we eventually began to descend. After we dropped for a while, the windows abruptly began to shimmer, then become transparent once more. At this signal, Sara reached out, flexed her fingers, and grabbed the controls. The craft shifted slightly as she took over, then leveled out.

Excitedly, I looked around through the bubble canopy. We were... somewhere dry. With lots of sand. And also some rocks. Given that we had started out in Carson City and flown for an only a couple of hours, that put a pretty hard cap on the distance we could have traveled. If I had to guess, I'd say that we were somewhere in the Mojave or elsewhere in the New Mexico and Arizona region. That said, it wasn't entirely out of the question that we had flown all the way to Mexico proper.

"So. Where exactly are we?" I said.

"We're at a major facility for ACCLAIM." Sara said. "It's hidden out here in the desert, in a nice forgettable location."

"Wait, doesn't it appear on satellite imaging?"

"Well, for one thing, a lot of the satellite platforms that were used for observation before the White Knight incident were shot down in the conflict that followed, so we're less worried about being observed than we would have been before that whole affair." Sara turned around and flashed me a quick smile. "We've got a legit registry for this place, too. As far as the government is concerned, we're just a bunch of antisocial but mostly harmless crazies out here."

"I see. And I suppose we deal with the helicopter being visible to satellites... How?"

"All of the observation platforms we would have to worry about are in retrograde right now." Sara said. "And we'll have the drone dealt with long before that's an issue."

"So are we going to this base or what?"

"Start walking."

⏪Ф⏩

After a short, brisk walk through the desert, we arrived at the gate of the compound. Sara flashed a badge at a hidden scanner at the entrance, and it slowly slid open to admit us. I walked in, looking at the buildings around us.

Most of them appeared to be ugly prefabricated structures, mixed in with differently ugly structures man from what appeared to be some form of cement made from the local sand. A few of the buildings were a mix of the two, which made for a truly impressive visual spectacle.

"Most of the compound is underground, anyway," Sara explained, as she led me on a path through the compound.

"I see." I said, looking around. I was impressed that ACCLAIM had the ability to create and maintain a compound of this size. "How do we keep this place supplied, anyway?"

"We have ways." Sara said bluntly.

We walked to a building in the rough center of the compound, and entered through a completely nondescript door in the side of an otherwise blank wall. We walked into what looked like a storage shed for... sand rakes?

"Most of the rest of the buildings are fronts." Sara explained, gesturing at the variety of dirt farming implements mounted on the walls. "It's the most boring duty in the world, or so I'm told."

Sara led me into the closet, then closed the door. It went from almost painfully bright to nearly pitch black in an instant, and stayed that way for a moment, until Sara produced a penlight and shone it on a random portion of the wall.

In response, a small keypad appeared out of the wall Sara approached it and entered a long series of numbers in it. The pad beeped, and what looked like a retinal scanner appeared and scanned her eye. It considered for a moment before apparently being satisfied.

The room shuddered, and the floor began to slide downward, leaving the racks on the wall in place. We dropped for a moment, a door in the wall coming into sight as we did so.

As the room reached bottom, Sara pressed her the palm of her hand onto a scanner on the wall, and the door slid open.

I walked through it, and it was like the transition from night to day. I stood in a clean, whitewashed corridor. As the door slid shut behind us, I followed Sara deeper into the facility.

After a short walk, we came to another door.

"Oh, hey Sara, you're back."

I turned around toward the speaker. He was a man of medium height, maybe in his thirties or forties. He wore a clean, if somewhat wrinkled lab coat, and carried a clipboard under one arm.

"Yeah, I'm back, Dr. Warner." Sara said, turning toward him. "I had a successful mission. How have you been? Made any discoveries that'll change the course of the war?"

The man, Warner, laughed. "Nothing so dramatic. I have, however, been having a good time going through some of the things this young man's team sent me?"

"Oh, that. I thought it had some pretty serious potential for energy weapons." I said, extending my hand to shake Warner's. "Using some of the methods that we could derive from that data, we could build a completely new type of beam collimator."

"Honestly, I was more interested in the power source and beam generation information." The older ACCLAIM engineer said. "We could be looking a pretty significant increase in beam energy density with this stuff."

"What are you nerds talking about?" Sara asked, whirling to look at me, then the doctor. "We don't have energy weapons."

"Not yet." Warner agreed. "By the way, how is your team, young man?"

My face fell. "They're dead. I thought we had gotten clean from the operation, then an I.S. showed up and killed them all. Then I did something and took it out and- Wait a second! What was that? What exactly did I do back there? I should have died like the rest of them!"

"That, young man, is an interesting question." Warner said, stepping forward and entering a passcode on a keypad mounted next to the door.

We entered the room, which appeared to be a laboratory of some sort. Various instruments of all sorts lined the walls, and something that looked like a bastardized MRI machine filled one corner of the room. The other half of the room contained what looked like Infinite Stratos suits in various stages of deconstruction.

"What... What is this?"

Warner chuckled. "Merely my workspace. Nothing _too_ threatening, I can assure you."

"So, you were going to answer my question." I said.

"Yes, yes." The doctor coughed, and his face straightened, becoming serious in an instant. "You manifested a strange power in that fight, one I would be lying if I said I fully understood."

"I know that."

"Anyway, the power you manifested, I believe, is connected to the object you recovered during your raid on the corporation. The one the size of a breadbox. You remember it, correct?"

"Oh, I remember that." I said. It did something strange during the fight. It was right after that happened that I started manifesting those... powers."

"The two are intimately connected." Warner said. "The object that you recovered was an experiment into a new use of the Second Shift technology of the I.S. system."

"What do you mean? I know second shift is a..." I made a beckoning gesture, "thing that the I.S. does, but I'm not sure on the specifics."

Warner sighed. "I'm not sure anyone is sure on the specifics. It has to do with the quantum interaction of the I.S. core with the frame of the mech and the mind and body of the pilot. It allows a minor physical transformation of the unit, or the use of a special one-off power."

"I see. So what does this have to do with whatever this... thing I have is?"

"Everything." Warner said. "The technology you stole was research into a method of, somehow, allowing a human being to utilize the Second Shift power of the I.S. to manifest an object that grants them superhuman power."

"That seems a little far-fetched." I said.

"You killed an I.S. pilot." Warner responded. "Isn't that proof enough that something is going on?"

"Okay, fine, but why-"

"Don't you see the significance of this?" Warner said. "What this could mean for our rebellion? If this grants us a method of taking on an Infinite Stratos in direct combat, this power could change everything."

Something behind be beeped.

"Oh." Warner said, "No time for that now, though. We have an incoming call from the Leader!"


End file.
